


6:10

by Terrantalen



Series: The Passenger [3]
Category: Blue Song - Mint Royale (Music Video)
Genre: Angst, First Kiss, First Love, In Other Words Dumb, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Tumblr Prompts, Yes angst, and I'm sorry, and more to come - Freeform, kiss kiss, teenage boys being teenage boys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 05:20:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29912010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Terrantalen/pseuds/Terrantalen
Summary: Two first kisses and then a third. Who knows how it will end?
Relationships: The Kid/OC
Series: The Passenger [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1823737
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3
Collections: Trash Triplets Present (to our own surprise): The Completely Spontaneous Kiss Kiss Week Collection





	6:10

**Author's Note:**

  * For [starsonthebrow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/starsonthebrow/gifts).



> Though nothing will keep us together  
> We could steal time just for one day  
> We can be heroes forever and ever  
> What d'you say?
> 
> -Heroes, David Bowie

It becomes a routine as soon as it starts, meeting Joe behind the supply shed after school. 

Lovell sees him standing there, one shoulder in the sun, one in the shade as he’s walking home one day. Joe is pressing buttons on his Walkman with a look of knotted concentration on his face. Lovell watches for half a second before his feet change direction and take him across the pitch.

“All right, Joe?” Lovell calls when he’s close enough that Joe should be able to hear him over his headphones. 

Joe looks up, surprised, then he smiles. He slips his headphones off and nods at Lovell, “All right.”

Lovell walks up to the wall and leans against the warm bricks. He nods at Joe’s Walkman. “What you got?”

“Bowie,” Joe says. “ _Heroes_.”

“Cool,” Lovell says. 

“You heard it before?” Joe asks.

The answer is yes, Lovell has heard it before. It’s one of the records he inherited from his uncle, but he hesitates. Maybe because of the way Joe is looking at him, not quite excitement, but something close. He looks like he’s got a secret he wants to tell. 

He wants to share this thing with Lovell and Lovell wants him to have it, that moment of giving someone something you think they’ll love, something they’ll have because of _you_. Something they’ll always hear or see and remember and think, _that was Joe, gave me that_ , a tie, almost. A link. 

It’s the first one, the first of what Lovell wants to be many. He’s used to making friends fast, used to giving a lot up front and seeing where he ends up later, and Joe is becoming a fast friend. Lovell sits next to him in two classes and they share sport as well. He gravitated toward Joe without even really thinking about it. 

His smile is good. His laugh is good. He’s just… nice in a way that not that many people are.

So, Lovell shakes his head, and Joe does exactly what he’s hoping for. He takes his headphones off and then passes them over. “You’ve got to hear it. It’s brilliant. Here.” 

Lovell feels fragile aluminum and Joe’s fingers for half a second, and then Joe is pressing buttons on the Walkman again. Lovell puts the headphones over his ears and Joe presses play somewhere in the middle of _Joe The Lion_.

Lovell smiles. “You made of iron, mate?”

Joe grins massively. “It’s well-hard, innit?” 

“S’great,” Lovell agrees, grinning back.

They stay like that, in the cooling autumn air, standing in grass that’s trying so hard to grow and stay green and not surrender to the mud that seeps up under their shoes, with Lovell listening as _Joe The Lion_ squeals out its last and _Heroes_ starts up. 

It sounds like the sky that day. Uncertain, with fat white clouds that have edges of grey, and highlights of something almost brighter than white, like pure light made into a color. Sky like that, you can’t tell which way things will go. It might rain, it might snow, or it might clear up and turn warm.

The guitar asks question after question, humming like blue glass under Bowie’s voice. Lovell isn’t sure how the song feels, even after the hundredth time hearing it. Like hope? Like giving up? Like something that wants to be but isn’t?

Joe’s eyes catch his; hazel, uncertain eyes, like the sky, like the song, like everything else in Lovell’s life, but maybe… maybe not anymore. “Heroes?” he asks.

Lovell nods. He slips the headphones down. “This is really good.”

“I know,” Joe says. He turns so that one shoulder is against the wall, so that he’s fully in the shade. The cord of the headphones wiggles between them as he moves. “Look. I… if you want, you could borrow it? Maybe bring me something to listen to? You’ve got cassettes, yeah?”

“Yeah. I’ve got some,” Lovell says. “I’ve got records too. Have you got a record player at home?”

Joe shakes his head. “I haven’t. Just my Walkman.”

“Okay,” Lovell says. “I’ll bring you a tape.”

The breeze kicks up and Joe tucks his hands into his pockets. “Cool.”

“You walking home?” Lovell asks.

Joe nods. “Yeah. In a minute. My dad… he works nights. Just… Don’t want to wake him up, you know?”

Lovell agrees like he does. “You hang out back here every day, then?”

“Most days,” Joe says and leaves it at that.

Lovell can tell that it’s time to go. He takes the headphones off his neck and hands them to Joe and Joe pops the cassette out of his Walkman then hands it over to him.

Lovell flips the tape in his fingers, like he’s doing a card trick with it, purposely trying to be a bit flash, not really knowing why it is he wants to show off for Joe. He zips the cassette into the chest pocket of his jacket. “See you,” he says.

“Later,” Joe says back.

And that’s it.

The first time they break into the supply shed is sometime near Guy Fawkes’. It’s Joe’s idea, or, actually, his suggestion, or, kind of just something that he mentions when it’s raining one time and Lovell decides to make it his mission to actually get them in there. He’s watched his dad jimmy locks a few times, when he forgot the keys to the garage at home and didn’t feel like driving back, or when he left the keys to the house on the counter and needed to get back in. 

It’s always looked pretty easy, and it is, at least now that he’s had two weeks of practice on the back door at home.

The most difficult bit had been finding a card to use. He ended up sneaking into his parents’ room to look for an old one and found his nan’s handbag in a box in the bottom of their closet. No one ever cleaned it out, so it had stale hard candies and flabby slips of paper, and even a five-pound note jammed at the bottom. It also had what he was looking for. A nice piece of plastic.

It’s a particularly miserable afternoon, wet and cold, with a steady breeze that likes to change direction like a drunk who’s just come off a merry-go-round. It slaps at them as Joe hands a tape to Lovell. Lovell hands him one back. 

He doesn’t recognize what he’s got off Joe, but he’s given him _Machine Head_ , which he’s sure he’ll like. He’ll like whatever Joe has handed him, too. It’s a given. Whatever Joe passes his way becomes his favorite thing until Joe gives him something else.

After the exchange, they chat and huddle against the back side of the shed, the side that faces an unenthusiastic line of trees, bare of leaves, and a row of frowning, grey flats, while they wait for Joe’s dad to wake up so Joe can go home. The sky slowly darkens. Lovell’s fingers start going numb at the tips. He buries them deeper in his pockets and flexes his chilly toes in his trainers.

A slow drizzle starts.

“This is shit,” Joe says frowning upwards.

This side of the shed is also the side with the door. Green painted over green, over green and again. The chips in the paint have never been sanded down, new paint has just been applied overtop, so it has a kind of craggy topography to it. 

Lovell gives the door a look. “You know,” he says, trying to sound cool about it, “I bet I could get us into the shed.”

Joe snorts. “Right. You got keys, then?”

“Nah.” 

“You gonna bash the door in?” Joe asks and Lovell shakes his head. Joe rolls his eyes. “So, you just gonna ask it nice? Open up?”

Lovell grins at him and picks up his bag. He braces it between his thigh and the wall as he unzips and rifles through it, past all the books that have gone untouched, through all the worksheets he hasn’t done, looking for his nan’s card. He finds it wedged at the back. He pulls it out and a worksheet escapes.

It floats up and then the wind changes direction and plasters it to the base of the wall. Lovell reaches for it, but Joe catches it first. He peers at it with a look of confusion. “Ain’t this from like, three weeks ago?”

“What? No.” He laughs and snatches the paper and jams it back into his bag where he can forget about it again. He zips his bag and then slings it over his shoulder. Joe is looking at him but Lovell doesn’t like exactly _how_ he’s looking.

“Here, watch,” he says, turning toward the door. He hopes the practice is worth it. He hopes Joe will be impressed. That he’ll forget… anything else.

He holds the silver door handle and then slides the card into the crack between the lock and the door. He shimmies it, pressing the card forward, straight at the latch, and then the door pops. 

He turns to Joe with a grin. “See?”

Joe tilts his head to the side and he smiles, the smallish gap between his front teeth on full display. “Alright. Where’d you learn to do that?”

Lovell bumps his hips sideways into the door as he pushes it open. He smiles. “Let’s go inside.”

Joe picks up his bag and they go in.

The best Lovell can say for it is that it isn’t windy inside.

It is dirty though. Dusty-dirty, musty from thousands of pairs of feet tracking in from outside without anyone once clearing up with a broom. It smells a bit like petrol, probably from the mower that’s peeking at them from under a drop cloth. There are tarpaulins piled in the corner, safety cones, and nets for the goals on the shelves along the sides, a couple of spades and a thresher hung up on the wall, and a bunch of junk stuck up in the rafters. It’s dim, too. Just one small window letting in light from the leaden sky. 

Joe eyes the room dubiously. “This looks like a great place to get murdered, don’t it?”

Lovell laughs. “Why’d you think I brought you in here?”

“Don’t think so.” Joe knocks his shoulder against Lovell’s and Lovell feels a thrill. Joe is the same height he is, but he’s built more solidly. Lovell is all bones and points. Joe has got a bit of muscle to him, or, at least, his shoulder feels that way. Solid, like. “If anyone’s murdering anyone,” Joe says, “it’ll be me murdering you.”

“Get lost.” Lovell swings his bag onto the floor. “I lured _you,_ didn’t I?”

“Nah, mate. I let you think that. I tricked you into opening the door so that your fingerprints would be all over it. Everyone’ll think you done it yourself. Suicide. Tragic. It’ll be in the papers, yeah? But I’ll have got away scot free, the perfect crime.”

“Whatever,” Lovell says, grinning. He sits down on his bag. He looks up at Joe. His face is cast silver-grey, his eyes dark. He looks like the man he’ll probably grow into someday. Roguish, clever, good-looking… Christ, yeah. Mostly that. Joe will grow up handsome, Lovell is sure. 

He hopes they’ll still know each other then.

Joe drops his bag on the floor and sits a little across from him. “I’m not saying it’s not an improvement, but it’s still cold as balls in here.”

Lovell shrugs. “We could light something on fire. That’d probably warm it up.”

Joe tucks his knees toward his chest. His trainers scuff on the dirty concrete. “Maybe some of those papers you’ve got in your bag.”

“Might as well,” Lovell says. He pushes himself up. 

“What are you doing?”

Lovell looks at Joe like he’s daft. “Getting the petrol, obviously. That’ll help get a fire going, won’t it?”

Joe laughs and grabs his arm, like he’s taking Lovell seriously. “You’ll burn us down, you lunatic. Sit down.”

Lovell fights a little, insists that he’s going to do it, and Joe giggles and tries to tug him down. Eventually, Lovell lets him. 

The shed stays cold, and it gets dark, but Lovell doesn’t want to be anywhere else in the world.

Joe never says that he knows about Lovell. He just starts doing his homework. Not usually in the shed, but during lunch, or when he starts coming to Lovell’s house to listen to music, he’ll just take out both worksheets and then they’ll talk, sometimes about the lesson, sometimes about other things, and Joe will write on both sheets and then put one in his bag and the other in Lovell’s.

Lovell never says he knows about Joe’s dad, even though he’s pretty sure he knows why Joe sometimes holds his arm around his chest like his ribs are sore, or winces going up stairs, or why Joe never invites him round, or seems like he wants to go home, ever. Instead, Lovell invites him to his, or keeps him out late at the shed, or at the library, or wherever he can keep him and ignores the things he can’t do anything about.

They both understand about each other and there isn’t any need to talk about it. They’re mates. Best mates, and best mates are in it together, no matter what, even if they don’t know exactly what it is they’re up against.

That’s why, when Joe tells him to keep the shopkeeper busy, Lovell just floats up to the counter with a packet of flying saucers without asking any questions. He pays and asks if he hasn’t got any lottery tickets? That gets the shopkeeper to ask how old he is and give him a dressing down about gambling that lasts longer than Joe needs for whatever he’s doing. 

He comes up behind Lovell and pulls on his sleeve. “Come on, Lovell. Let’s go.” 

They walk out together and Lovell tears open the bag of sweets and holds it toward Joe.

“What’d you take?” he asks.

Joe shrugs. He takes a flying saucer and pops it in his mouth. “You’ll see,” he says, grinning around the rapidly dissolving pink sugar. 

Lovell pops the lock on the shed in under a second and they go inside. Joe unzips his jacket and pulls a magazine out. Lovell expects an NME or something like that, but it’s not. 

A naked woman is spread out before Lovell’s eyes. 

He laughs, surprised. “Christ, Joe.”

Joe grins at him, all puckish, roguish mischief. It takes him a moment to say it, a moment to make the offer, and then he does. “Fancy a look?”

Lovell feels his face heat. He supposes that he should. He definitely… feels things, kind of a lot recently, actually, except… well. He should. So, he nods. “Yeah.”

Joe stands shoulder to shoulder with him as he peels back the cover. More naked girls, some of them in fancy knickers, some of them just naked, a few of them touching themselves in ways that Lovell supposes make sense if you’ve got the anatomy for it. “Christ,” he says. He glances sideways at Joe.

Joe is biting his lip.

Lovell swallows. 

It’s wordless, that’s how he remembers it. It’s just shifting the magazine so that it’s on a shelf and then it’s he and Joe next to one another, looking at it together. Lovell’s eyes stay glued to the page, but he’s not really looking. He’s listening to the sound of Joe’s breathing, thinking of just how close they’re stood, realizing that he could look down and see Joe’s hand touching himself, and he goes quick, knowing that it’s not really the naked woman that’s done it, but insisting to himself that it is.

It becomes something else that they do in the shed.

Not always, just sometimes.

And they figure out other ways to do it. Always, the magazine is there, and then a different magazine eventually when he and Joe lift another. They always prop it open. Lovell always looks at it, but his eyes don’t always stay put.

Joe’s don’t either.

The first time _that_ happens isn’t for months. 

It’s a warm, rainy day and they’ve come to the shed rather than go to Lovell’s house because they both fancy doing this. Joe sets up the magazine on the floor under the window and they kneel across from one another. 

Lovell starts off like he always does, unzipping himself while he stares fixedly at the naked woman he’s supposedly getting off to, trying to decide just how much it’s her and just how much it isn’t. He can see Joe’s kneecaps just beyond her bare, orange-tinted skin, his black trousers bunched further up his thighs. 

He doesn’t realize that he’s looking until he notices what he sees. Skin. Just past the waistband that Joe has shifted down, hair thatching his thighs. Lovell tucks his into his mouth. He sees the motion of Joe’s hand just in the peripheral of his vision. He wants to look just a little more up, wants to see that motion clearly, but he doesn’t dare.

Then, Joe makes a noise. It’s not unusual for there to be some kind of noise from one, or both of them, but this one is different. This time, Joe says, _oh god_ , and moans and Lovell is surprised enough that he glances up and their eyes meet. 

“You’re so…” Joe gasps. 

He doesn’t say anything else, or if he does, Lovell doesn’t hear it over the pounding pulse in his ears. He comes almost instantly, shooting into his own fist with confused elation.

They don’t talk about that, either. Of fucking course they don’t. They don’t talk about any of the other times, or how the magazine becomes almost entirely for show. It’s still there, they’re still acting like normal, straight boys by having it, except now Lovell knows exactly what Joe’s cock looks like, and Joe knows what his looks like, and they both know exactly what it looks like when the other loses it. He likes knowing. He wants to know more.

He doesn’t know how to get to know more, though.

It makes sense that he’s the one to fuck it up. 

It’s a year to the day from the first time Lovell met Joe behind the shed, a year since Joe gave him _Heroes_. They meet behind the shed and hand each other cassettes and talk about music, and talk about what this year is going to be like, and, for the first time in his life, Lovell feels like things are possible.

Joe makes them possible. Joe who understands and doesn’t ask questions, but still knows.

For the first time in his life, Lovell is getting almost decent marks. For the first time in his life, his parents are living together, happy together, settled in a house that actually has started to feel like a home and not just a place to stay. Joe hasn’t got anything to do with that, but he’s been there for nearly all of it, so it feels like he does. Joe is stability, and safety, and knowing where he’ll be sleeping the next night, where he’ll be going to school the next day, and having things be fucking normal instead of just fucked.

It’s so much, what they are to each other. Best mates. More than best mates.

Lovell leans back against the wall of the shed, luxuriating in the September sun, smiling as Joe tells him what he thought of _Ziggy Stardust_. This is it, the best place in the world, because Joe is there. He gives him a look.

Joe stalls in the middle of his sentence. “Should we go in?”

Lovell nods. 

They aren’t embarrassed anymore. It’s just tossing their jackets over the handle of the lawn mower and then fumbling with zips and standing so that they’re almost hip to hip, so that they can see each other together, so that they are very nearly touching each other instead of just themselves. 

“ _Joe_ ,” Lovell gasps, because it’s not enough. It’s just not. He feels everything in him insisting that there is more and they can have more, and that he wants more than _almost_ and _nearly_. 

Fuck it. He does it. He stops touching himself and he reaches for Joe’s hand, half-expecting Joe to slap him, except he doesn’t. 

He lets Lovell touch him. He doesn’t touch back, but Lovell doesn’t care. He wants to touch more than he needs to be touched himself. “Is it alright?” he asks.

Joe just nods. He closes his eyes, and Lovell does, too. He feels skin, smells sweat and dirt, he hears the soft sounds of Joe, his Joe, his best mate, his first love. Joe comes, clutching his shoulder and gasping.

Lovell thinks it will be forever. It seems like it has to be. He finishes himself, thinking it will be. When he opens his eyes, Joe is staring at him. Clouds, hanging in a blue sky. White so bright, it’s just light, blue glass under everything. It’s all theirs. Lovell leans forward and kisses him.

Joes lips are soft, warm, almost ticklish against his. It’s shy, a bit funny. His first kiss. It’s perfect for half a second, then Joe shoves him away.

Lovell stumbles back, nearly falling on account of his half-dropped pants and trousers. He catches himself against the sharp metal edge of one of the shelves. “What—?”

“The fuck is wrong with you?” Joe shouts. He pulls his trousers up, zips and buckles himself. “What the fuck, Hewitt?”

“What do you mean what the fuck?” Lovell asks back. “I thought—”

“Thought what?”

Lovell doesn’t say anything. He wipes his hand, which has his spunk and Joe’s spunk on it, against the wall. He just gets it dirtier. He gingerly does himself back up, trying not to make a mess of his trousers. Joe is staring at him like he can use his eyes to incinerate him. 

Truth is, he can. Lovell feels himself burning up. “I thought you wanted… me.” 

Joes shakes his head; he paces back and forth in the narrow space between the tarpaulins and the door. “Wanted… fuck, what do you think I’m some kind of…” he kicks the door and it shudders. He turns around. “I’m not fucking _gay_ , Lovell.”

The way Joe says _that_...

“Yeah, course not.” Lovell spits at him, incensed. “Just like to wank in a shed with me because of the company, that it?”

“You’re the one who fucking touched me, you dick. You fucking _kissed_ me.”

“Yeah, I know!” Lovell shouts. “And you fucking let me.”

“I didn’t ask you to!”

“So what?”

“So… you’re the one who… this is your fault!”

Lovell laughs, even though nothing is funny. He wants to get his jacket and go, so he starts to walk toward where they’ve draped them over the mower, but Joe is in the way. 

“Move,” Lovell says.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Joe snaps. “I’m not gay, Lovell.”

“Alright, Joe. Jesus fucking Christ. You’re not gay. Whatever. What the fuck ever. Just. I want to leave, alright?”

“No. Fuck you. No.”

Lovell tosses his hands up in the air. “Well, what the fuck do you want me to do, then?”

“Just. Stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“ _Stop it_.” Joe’s fist lands in the middle of Lovell’s chest. It doesn’t actually hurt, nor does it hurt the second time he hits him, or the third. Joe pummels him like his arms are made of rags. Tears start rolling out of his eyes. 

Lovell grabs his shirt. He wants to shove him, he wants to hold him, he wants to do what Joe wants him to do and stop whatever is happening, only he hasn’t got any idea how. He pulls him closer and Joe nearly melts. It’s the stupidest thing Lovell has ever done in his life, when he kisses him again.

Joe’s response is the same. He shoves him, only this time, Lovell does stumble. He hits the wall and then Joe’s fist lands on his jaw, clacking his teeth together. Pain radiates up to Lovell’s eye, all along his hip and shoulder, and he realizes he’s on the ground. 

“Fuck you!” Joe shouts. He snatches his jacket, flashing in and out of the window like an angry shadow puppet. “I thought you were my friend!”

When he slams the door, Lovell knows it’s over.

They’ll never speak again. How could they?

Joe _isn’t gay_. Lovell is. That’s sorted.

He spits out a mouthful of blood. Dirt turns to mud. His blood seeps into the concrete. He stares at his filthy hands.

He’s not sure why he’s not crying. He isn’t, then he notices he isn’t, and his chest tightens. He inhales and it hurts. All of it hurts, and when he thinks of what he wants to make it better, he sees hazel eyes and a gap-toothed smile, and, then. Then, he cries.

**Author's Note:**

> For the lovely starsonthebrow. Thank you so much for giving me the prompt and allowing me to write out some of this backstory. It's been burning a hole in me for a while. 🖤🖤🖤


End file.
